Thursday, February 18, 2010

So I guess I have some explaining to do. (Do you sit on your deck blogging and does your tree drop all kinds of crap into your keyboard making you wonder what the insides of your laptop now look like and at which point that laptop will grind to a crunching dead-leaves-and-red-spider-mites HALT altogether??? I DO!)

So what is your idea of a romantic weekend? Possibly it has taken me a long time to figure this out, But this last Valentine's Day weekend was really the most perfect for me. It involved a day at the beach, a day at the flea market, (as I have shared with you) and a day at Ikea! I could have easily substituted a day at the hardware store for the day at Ikea, but Home Depot makes my husband weep in frustration and anyway, if I'd gone there instead, I couldn't share with you this hysterical link. (This site, entitled "Go Away" appears at the far bottom right of my blogroll and I'm sure you all miss it all the time. I think it's just the thing in certain moments, sort of Python meets Seinfeld at Judge Judy's. I'll let you decide for yourselves).

So as I've said. When you're young and you don't know any better, you fall for all that Hallmark stuff at Valentine's Day, but when life's great existential pickup truck has run you over a couple of times and left some touchy grooves on your person where its tires once were, well, cheap polyester ribbon and floppy big-headed roses just won't cut it! Cause no matter what you do to those flowers - sprays powders snipping the ends off or refrigerating them, their big heads will just flop over - and accordingly with them every probable illusion about your fine romance. And what will you be left with?

I'll leave you to contemplate that for a moment.

So I'm telling you. Yours may not be the same triple threat as mine, but you get the drift. Someday you, like me, may find a greater comfort in the idea that:

2) The Remembrance of Things Past is never Sweeter (old junk) than when you can pinch yourself and be reminded that you, my Dear, are still a Thing of the Present. (And so is your Love.)

3) NOTHING can be more romantic than schlepping a heavy awkward cardboard box up the stairs together (him pushing too hard and you falling over on a turn) and then toddling off on your own to make a nice dinner while that Hunka-Hunka Burning Love is sweating and swearing over allen wrenches and flimsy paper diagrams to make something cheap and cheerful for you to set your tidy little botty on! Or stuff your bits and bobs in. (See how Ikea brings on the double entendres?)

You will never be too rich, too thin, or too old to find fascination in other people's relics and satisfaction in something HOME-MADE. (Even if it came into your home in a flat-pack. )

And as for beaches. (In February!) The story I'm about to tell could not remotely have been as charming if it had taken place in a strip mall. I PROMISE.

So here's where the aforementioned explaining comes in: In my lifetime I never have before, nor ever will again I think have a more enrapturing encounter than last Saturday when a loping, wobbly, slightly dopey but impossibly loving little four-month or so St. Bernard puppy named BENTLEY kept splitting off from his Master to follow ME down the beach. The first time I crouched down to say Hi and let him tuck himself under me and wiggle and bob while I rubbed him down from front to back. The second time I just waved and tried to speed away while his Master called at him to heel. The third time I crouched down again and he galloped up to lavish my left cheek with huge wet kisses. Finally his master had to put down the drink glass he was carrying and produce the old red leash and leash that bad puppy in! (OH! So Sorry! Little Bentley Love!)

I didn't take any pictures. Because some moments are so special, the charm would be broken by whipping the camera out and trying to coax someone into the most camera pleasing pose. And sometimes when you take a picture, the magical moment disappears in the time it takes for the shutter to retract and since it's crystallized in (what? digits?) OK digits! these days, (no I must mean pixels) it does not make a proper imprint on your brain and most importantly, on your heart.

Yes some of the best pictures get away. In fact most of the best ones do. Because the universe intends for you to capture them by other means.

NOW. IF. Hubby hadn't been there alongside me that day. This story might have ended entirely differently. The charming, smoothly coiffed, silver-haired Master MIGHT have invited me home for, uh, Champagne cocktails or better - Bellini's. With him and Bentley. And riding in his Porsche (we ARE talking Malibu here). And maybe where that Porsche is parked there might have been ALL OF BENTLEY'S FAMILY!!!!!! Or at least his (Dog) Mom. (All you other Mom's butt out!) And I might now be blogging to you from my gracefully weathered teak chaise-longue overlooking the ocean in my new blonde blow-out and diamond ankle bracelet. Now wouldn't THAT be ROMANTIC?

Or an episode from the Big Lebowski.

No I am quite content with my weekend as it was. And I am quite content with my new mantra: Bentley, Bentley, Bentley. Because each time I utter it Bentley is very real before me, and with me. In all his soft affection.

And when it rains this weekend I won't be the one taking Bentley out under a collapsed umbrella, his big wet tail lashing me as we go along. I won't be the one shooing him off the sofa and chasing him around the house with old towels trying to get his muddy soaked feet clean.

I won't be out in the back-forty slaughtering herds of steers to ensure that Bentley will have adequate sustenance for the whole of his loping canine days. Or hunkered over my industrial can-opener prising open those mammoth cans of mush that stand-in for honest protein these days.

I'll be here in the dry reminding myself once again that, as lovely as last weekend was for me, this weekend will probably not be the same. And that there probably never WILL be another weekend in my lifetime quite like that. And that I will probably never ever see Bentley, or a dog at all like him, ever ever again. Which makes it that much more special.

6 comments:

very nice! and the style --I love! To answer your question, I cook myself. No help there but it's fine as I am rather picky and well Petit Caramel eats what I eat (I did not go through the "mush" ritual most babies go through). Have a lovely week end! And thanks so much for your visit and kind comments. PD: heart warming story Bentley & you!

Laura - it's possible you have a husband (unlike mine) who's happy to take a great big checkbook with you both to the brocante. I might have been too subtle, shopping does NOT make my husband happy. So when I leave the house with him, the checkbook stays at home. My hubby is more romantic when he's not writing big checks. I DID try for an extravagant and expansive Frenchman. But the universe sent me a penny-pinching Briit instead. (But hey! He plays guitar!)

I'm not a romantic, to my husband's despair. He wants to buy me all kinds of gift which makes me MAD because I'm the penny pincher, and way to controlling to accept surprise goods from anyone. For me, not fighting and being glad to be each other's company is romance enough. After 22 years together, that ain't bad.

corine - elephants, cows and tigers - i think i'm an ANIMAL person. and you're right about romance. however on my second night of claudette colbert films, a little arguing seems like the spice of life.

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